A Toaster on Mars

by Darrell Pitt

Lisa jumped from the cabin just as Badde caught up. He looked remarkably refreshed considering how far he’d just run, and how fast.

  ‘You…’ he said, hatred in his eyes. ‘You…’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I ran out of Hypergo and needed another bottle.’

  Badde pulled out a stun gun and Lisa saw a white haze.

  ‘No more Mr Nice Guy,’ Badde said, as Lisa passed out.

  27

  Blake woke in darkness, his eyes struggling to focus. Glancing around, he realised he was in what appeared to be an ancient underground drain with a thin stream of putrid water running down the middle.

  How did I get here? What’s happening?

  ‘Blake?’

  He looked up into Nicki’s face.

  ‘What…where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

  The memories came back. ‘Holy sprot,’ he said. ‘You saved my life.’ He stretched a hand out to her. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Nicki said.

  ‘Well, if you say so…’

  ‘No, no,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I mean, it was really good. Very heroic.’

  Blake looked around. ‘Where’s Astrid?’

  ‘I’d better fill you in.’

  Nicki explained how, after the crash, she and Astrid had carried him away from the GADO vault. They had gone about half a mile when they heard guards approaching. Astrid suggested splitting up so she could create a diversion to lead the guards away. Nicki, in the meantime, had found an underground tunnel to hide Blake. Later, she had picked up a signal saying that Astrid had been captured.

  ‘You never should have left her!’ Blake snapped.

  ‘They were closing in on all sides.’

  ‘She needed you!’

  ‘Astrid wanted you to save Lisa.’

  ‘Do you know what the sentence is for breaking into a top-secret government installation?’

  ‘Two hundred years of hard labour followed by—’

  ‘No need to tell me. I already know.’

  Blake fell silent. He shouldn’t yell at Nicki, but Lisa would never forgive him if her mother ended up behind bars for life. There was little he could do right now. First he had to focus on Lisa.

  At that moment, the clattering of metal reverberated down the ancient tunnel. Blake pulled out his blaster. ‘Who is it?’ he demanded into the gloom. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Just cleaning up,’ came a voice.

  An old droid dressed in overalls and pushing a mop appeared. His joints squealed as he pushed back his cap.

  ‘Who are you?’ Blake demanded.

  ‘Just the cleaner,’ he said. ‘I’m an Alpha 9001 cleaning droid. You can call me Al.’

  Nicki introduced herself and Blake. ‘My partner and I are criminals,’ she said. ‘We’ve just successfully broken into this complex—’

  ‘Ignore her,’ Blake cut her off. ‘She needs a reboot.’

  ‘Don’t tell me about reboots.’ The old droid leant on his mop. ‘Do you know the last time I had an upgrade? Thirty-two years ago.’

  Blake started looking for an exit. ‘We were on the tour and got a little lost. We’re trying to get out of here.’

  The old droid scratched his chin. ‘Do I look like tourist information?’

  ‘No, but you’ve been here a long time and—’

  ‘The exits are on the upper levels,’ he said. ‘They don’t allow me on the upper levels. I’m not good enough for the upper levels. You’ve got to be special to go to the upper levels.’

  Blake was wondering what the sentence was for shooting a cleaning droid. ‘I get the idea,’ he said. ‘Do you know another way out of here?’

  ‘I know a hundred ways out of here.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No.’ Al thought for a moment. ‘Probably only about four. And for three of them, you’d need to be dismembered and mailed home in pieces.’

  Blake gritted his teeth and counted to ten before asking, ‘What’s the fourth option?’

  ‘There’s a way out. I can take you, but you’ll have to do the last bit yourself.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ Blake said. ‘Lead the way.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m busy,’ Al said. ‘After all, I’m the cleaner. I have to keep cleaning. That’s what cleaners do. If I weren’t a cleaner…’

  Blake started counting again.

  ‘I know what it’s like to be unappreciated,’ Nicki said, laying a hand on Al’s arm. ‘Tell me about it while we walk.’

  They followed the sewer pipe. Occasionally the ground shook. GADO must be weapons testing, Blake thought. It was rumoured they did all sorts of strange things down here.

  Zeeb says:

  Indeed, GADO has conducted many strange tests over the years, most of them relating to weaponry, but they did flirt briefly with doing something useful: trying to solve world hunger. They experimented with developing a plant that would grow in any environment, but things went badly wrong.

  The plant was called balton, and they trialled it on the planet of Tarnadia. At first the scientists were overjoyed: the plant was quite prolific. In fact, it grew on anything—and everything—it touched. Even the native Tarnadians. Within months the plant had covered every inch of the planet and had even sprung into space, catching hold of the Tarnadian moon.

  Soon, it was gobbling up every world in sight. Scientists eventually had to push the thing into its nearby sun, destroying the entire solar system and ten million years of Tarnadian history.

  Altogether it was one of GADO’s less successful experiments.

  ‘Are you sure we’re heading for an exit?’ Blake asked after a while. ‘We seem to be going really deep.’

  ‘GADO reaches three miles under the earth,’ Al said. ‘The more important the invention, the deeper they store it. The most secret device of all is kept in a vault at the very bottom.’

  ‘It must be super secret,’ Nicki said.

  ‘Oh, it is,’ Al said. ‘It’s a phasing device, a suit you can wear to walk through anything—concrete, steel, even a sun.’

  ‘If it’s so secret, how do you know about it?’

  ‘It’s still got to be cleaned.’

  ‘And it’s the most valuable weapon in GADO?’ Blake asked.

  ‘Absolutely. I probably shouldn’t even be telling you about it, but I’m just the cleaner,’ Al grumbled. ‘And who—’

  ‘—listens to the cleaner?’ Blake said. ‘I know.’

  They encountered another junction that led to a concrete-lined water channel, wide enough for a car to drive down. Unexpected pieces of rubbish littered the edges.

  Blake peered into the grime. ‘What are all these yellow stubs?’

  ‘Cigarette butts,’ Nicki said.

  ‘Cigarettes? What’re they?’

  ‘I believe they were part of a strange 20th-century custom,’ Nicki explained. ‘Millions of people would place a chemical pipe bomb in their mouths and set it alight.’

  ‘Holy sprot,’ Blake said. ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘It was probably a kind of ritual suicide. Standing outside city buildings, they would light up and see who would explode first.’

  ‘Sort of a death wish?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The ancients were very strange, Blake thought.

  They walked another fifty feet before Al stopped. ‘This is as far as I go,’ he said.

  Blake looked around. This part of the tunnel looked the same as the rest of it.

  ‘So how do we get out?’ he asked.

  Al pointed at the floor. ‘Right here.’

  Blake looked down. ‘We’re supposed to go through the floor?’ he said.

  ‘I said I could only take you most of the way,’ Al said. ‘From here you’ve got to dig through the rock yourself.’

  Blake was about to retort when the ground shuddered again. ‘What the sprot is that? Weapons testing?’

  ‘No,’ Al said. ‘Someone’s digging under the complex.’
>
  It took a moment for this to sink in. ‘Let me get this straight,’ Blake said. ‘You’re saying someone is digging under GADO.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of months.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell anyone?’

  ‘I’m only the cleaner. Who’s gonna listen—’

  Blake’s wristcomm rang. He peered at the screen. The call was coming from the planet Xebia.

  I don’t know anyone on Xebia. Who’d be calling me?

  The caller had a foreign accent. ‘Hello, sir. My name is Bob. How are you today?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Just returning your call,’ Bob said. ‘We have a fine range of holidays available from only 10,000 credits—’

  ‘I didn’t inquire about a holiday,’ Blake said, ‘and I’m not interested.’

  ‘But we were told to call and ask for you directly.’

  ‘Who were you after?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can get the pronunciation correct,’ Bob said. ‘Is that Mr Help-I’m-Being-Held-Captive-In-ThePye-Building-Across-The-Road-From-GADO-Love-Lisa?’

  It took Blake all of five seconds to understand the message.

  Help! I’m being held captive in the Pye building across the road from GADO! Love Lisa!

  ‘What is it, Blake?’ Nicki asked.

  His mind had already kicked into overdrive: Lisa’s kidnapping, Badde wanting the Maria virus, the tunnel beneath GADO, the theft of the Super-EMP.

  He hung up. ‘We’ve been played for dummies,’ Blake said to Nicki. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘You mean through the floor?’ Nicki asked.

  ‘No.’ He turned to Al. ‘This is your lucky day, old droid. Today we’re heading for the upper levels.’

  28

  Astrid was afraid, but she wasn’t going to let the GADO operatives know it. They had already tried to intimidate her by handcuffing her, and dragging her into an interrogation room.

  And they had broken one of her nails.

  Since then, she had slept through the night with only the broken nail to keep her company. The interrogation room was sterile. Three walls were made of white plastic. The fourth was darkened glass—obviously a one-way mirror. The table and chairs were steel and bolted to the floor. The whole place smelt of disinfectant.

  She was stuck in here. GADO security was probably watching her from behind the glass. Even with the best lawyer on Earth, the case was clear-cut. She was guilty. A judge would sentence her to a long jail term. She would probably see the light of day in…oh…about 10,000 years.

  This was not exactly how she’d planned her week.

  Astrid was also worried for Blake and Nicki. The virus would never be delivered to Badde if they were also captured. And then what would happen to Lisa?

  But if Astrid thought about that too much she’d go crazy.

  She had to throw the GADO agents off the scent. But how…?

  On the other side of the darkened glass, Sam Feldspar, the GADO director, ran a hand through his cropped grey hair. He wasn’t often rattled—he had been a military officer for twenty years—but he felt uneasy about the woman. She didn’t look afraid, yet she should have been. The woman had been caught red-handed breaking into one of the most secure facilities on Earth.

  The door slid open behind him, and Agent Krodo and Agent Smelk entered.

  Krodo was from Telva, a hot, wet planet, half a billion light years from Earth. He was short and reptilian-looking, with four clawed arms and round, mustard-coloured eyes. By comparison, Smelk was tall, human and would have been mistaken for Cary Grant in a previous age.

  The two men had headed the interrogation team at GADO for years. If anyone could make the woman crack, Feldspar was sure they could.

  ‘You boys ready to apply pressure?’ he asked.

  ‘Like a shower,’ Krodo agreed. ‘It’ll be good cop, bad cop all the way.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Smelk.

  ‘I’m good cop,’ Krodo said. ‘Smelk is bad.’

  Smelk hesitated. ‘Really? Again.’

  ‘We’ve talked about this before. Good cop needs to be pretty on the eye.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m pretty?’

  ‘I wasn’t saying that—’

  Ten minutes later, after a game of scissors, paper and rock, Krodo ended up as bad cop. He marched into the room and thumped a fist on the table.

  ‘Listen, you ugly tabortha—’

  Zeeb says:

  No one is ugly.

  Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

  Astrid’s reaction to being called a tabortha was immediate. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

  The two agents exchanged glances. This might be easier than they’d expected. They settled into the chairs opposite Astrid and waited for her tears to subside. Smelk produced a handkerchief, as only a good cop can, and she gratefully accepted it.

  ‘You need to level with us, lady,’ Krodo said, folding his four arms. ‘It’ll go easier that way.’

  ‘Much easier,’ Smelk agreed.

  ‘We’re gonna ask you questions and you’re gonna give us answers.’

  ‘That’s right. Questions and answers.’

  Astrid finished wiping her eyes. ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ she said. ‘It will be a relief to finally speak to someone.’

  ‘Let it all out, lady,’ Krodo advised. ‘You’ll feel better for it.’

  Astrid nodded. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said. ‘But the truth needs to be told.’

  The agents nodded. They both knew that criminals often wanted to confess their crimes. Guilt was a heavy burden, after all.

  ‘First we need to know your name,’ Smelk said.

  ‘Eyre,’ Astrid said. ‘Jane Eyre.’

  The officer dutifully entered the name into his notes.

  Astrid continued. ‘I began life as a doctor, but I wanted to do more than save lives. I wanted to change the very way we see life and death.’ She hesitated. ‘I should warn you, I’m about to reveal some shocking details.’

  Krodo waved away the objection. ‘We’re unshockable,’ he said. ‘We’re GADO agents.’

  ‘It began with my obsession with cemeteries.’

  ‘Cemeteries?’

  ‘I started visiting them because I needed body parts for my research. Fresh body parts.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I wanted to reanimate dead tissue,’ Astrid said.

  ‘The reanimation of dead bodies.’ Krodo blinked his mustard-coloured eyes. He had never heard anything like it. ‘That’s serious sprot.’

  ‘Oh, my friend Elizabeth Bennet was against it. So was my fiancé, Fitzwilliam Darcy.’

  ‘But you still went ahead with it.’

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy, so I sought the aid of a doctor I knew.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Moreau.’

  ‘And what’s his story?’

  Astrid shook her head in dismay. ‘He was a sick individual,’ she said. ‘I realised, too late, that he wanted to combine human and animal DNA to create a new race of which he would be master.’

  Smelk let out a long breath. ‘That is sick. Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. He moved to some island.’

  ‘Don’t hold back on us, lady,’ Krodo warned. ‘What’s the name of this island?’

  ‘I truly don’t know. I only know he went there by submarine.’

  ‘And the owner of the submarine?’

  ‘Nemo.’

  ‘How do you spell that?’

  ‘N-E-M-O.’

  ‘Sounds Swedish.’

  ‘He’s a man without a country.’

  ‘A loner,’ Smelk said, rubbing his chin. ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Moreau became convinced that an invasion was imminent.’

  ‘An invasion? From where?’

  Astrid sat forward. ‘Mars.’


  ‘What?’ Smelk exclaimed. ‘That’s baloney! Mars and Earth have been at peace for centuries.’

  ‘I said the chances were a million to one.’ Astrid shrugged. ‘But Moreau had another project that was equally serious.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘A time machine.’

  Krodo slammed four fists on the table. ‘Time travel’s against every rule in the book!’

  ‘I know!’ Astrid buried her face in her hands again, weeping so hard it could have been mistaken for laughter.

  Finally, she said in a strangled voice, ‘And it gets worse.’ She wiped her face dry. ‘Moreau built the time machine. I used it to travel into the future. It was an era where vampires had taken over the planet. Humans were almost extinct. I got lost. Found a cabin in the woods owned by a man named Tom. Two other men turned up.’

  ‘Their names?’

  ‘Jekyll and Hyde. There was a meeting. And a decision was made.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘To journey to the centre of the Earth.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll get to that. We travelled for months through Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. On the way we met a girl named Dorothy. She was lost, too. And broken-hearted. She’d just eaten her dog.’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘It was the apocalypse.’ Astrid shrugged. ‘Bad things were happening everywhere. Anyway, we got a group together. There was me, Gandalf, Poppins, Lancelot, Oliver Twist, Tom Jones—’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Smelk interrupted. ‘Why were you putting this group together?’

  ‘We had to go up against the Big Bad himself.’

  ‘And he was?’

  ‘The cat,’ Astrid said. ‘In the hat.’

  ‘He lived in a hat?’ Smelk was incredulous.

  ‘He’s a mutant.’

  ‘The Big Bad of the future is a mutant cat? And he lives in a hat?’

  Before Astrid could reply, the door to the interview room flew open and Sam Feldspar stuck his head in.

  ‘We need to have a meeting,’ he said. ‘Bring her.’

  ‘We’re making headway,’ Smelk said cautiously. ‘Can we—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Feldspar said. ‘Something’s come up.’

  Krodo was disappointed. It was rare that interviews went so well. He turned to Astrid. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Miss Eyre.’

  ‘Call me Jane.’